"It's My Body
and I'll Cry If I Want To"

Beth
Middleton is reaching middle age and her life is a mess. Her fourteen-year-old
daughter, Paige, behaves indifferent at best, hostile at her worse. Her husband, Rusty
has recently divorced her requiring more fun in his life. And, because
she went too far on a research project, her freelance work has come down
to writing "quasi-advertorials" usually targeted to appeal to
one's vanity.

So when she
receives a phone call from a baldheaded woman named Darby who explains
that a secret organization would like to hire her for a sensitive assignment,
Beth is curious enough to want to meet but, more so, is unwilling to turn
down a chance at a credible research job. Although, it concerns her that
they say she looks right for the assignment. Beth normally avoids jobs
that require face-to-face interaction; she does not even own a business
suit, preferring to work at home in her sweats and poodle dog slippers.
And she hasn't had a bit of cosmetic surgery to slow down the aging process.

It turns
out the assignment is to infiltrate a beauty clinic, and she's been chosen
not just because of her research skills, but because she is so plain that
she's practically invisible. Some asset. The organization that Darby represents
is a group of women that are concerned about the image woman have in this
society and are actively fighting what they call the Perceived Ugliness
Syndrome (or PUS); they want to stop woman and girls from judging
themselves against the unreal expectations of "beauts." Anyhow,
Darby and the group believe that this clinic called the The Beauty Institute
(TBI) - a subsidiary of BeautyCorp - are getting ready to roll out something
that is going to be extremely damaging to woman the world over and it
is Beth's job to find them out. But how does she convince TBI to take
her as a client when its obvious she's not cared before?

As instructed,
Beth takes the water taxi from shore to the island where TBI is located
(the irony is that its a former leper colony), half believing she can
still get out of this since she's not really taken on the PUS job yet.
Checking herself in her own mirror on the way over, she feels she's done
a fine job of camouflaging herself with the right makeup and the body
shaper under her new chic pink-wool suit. She's fine that is, until she
walks into the clinic. Checking herself in their mirror, she cans
see that her suit faired better than her face - but, she's on to them,
she knows it is their lighting... Then she sees the holographic
image of a "TBI Girl: Under Construction." The girl is absolutely
fascinating between her muscle definition and her "thigh-length hair,
glossy blonde with Kaleidoscopic highlights; cantaloupe-sized breasts
forming a deep cleavage between the plunging neckline of a white, sleeveless
mini-dress; spherical buttocks hinting of an equally impressive cleft
just below the dress' deep back. An extravagant stretch of body mass was
given to long, lean legs. A beautician." Almost real, except she's
missing the eyes, nose and mouth --- apparently TBI is still working on
the universal perfect face.

So Beth meets
with Mary for an interview. Not that this goes smooth since Beth is trying
to play the role of someone who wants to improve her looks, yet in reality
she is quite reluctant to sign up for any of their surgical treatment
and humorously (for us) sends these mixed messages to Mary. Mary judges
that by how long it took Beth to answer their questionnaire -- the computer
times the applicants while they answer --- she lacks the key feature they
need to make the program work: motivation. "Why a woman seeks treatment
affects how satisfied she'll be with the eventual outcome." Sure,
Beth thinks, they wouldn't want to take money from anyone with unreasonable
expectations or judging by the next question, that has been unsatisfied
with a previous "treatment." So catching on, she reveals her
new status as a recent divorcée. Perfect, they have a slot for
her to begin right away.

Once she
gets involved with the program, it does get to be a little harder to stand
on her own journalistic principles; the pampering some of these treatments
provide is nice and the outcome is enticing. It is humorous as she subjects
herself to the various treatments, always cautious, sometimes intrigued
but try as she might, she never reaches the level of motivation that TBI
clients are supposed to have. At least, not like TBI's good client Georgina,
a woman Beth tries to befriend first to learn the ropes and then because
she feels sorry for her. Fishing for information, Beth mentions to Georgina
that if she took the advice of everyone there, she's afraid that "I'll
look in the mirror one of these mornings and not recognize who's blinking
back at me." With which Georgina responds, "That's
my dream...It's what I'm waiting for, that total lack of recognition
of who I've been up to now, that magic moment that means the transformation
is complete."

Jonasson
is a very polished writer, pulling off a level of humor that is a mix
of self-debasement, cynicism and slapstick. True, she takes the subject
of beauty and makes it into a light comedy, but the reality is, she's
got a strong message. Darby's concern about the beauts and the perceived
ugliness syndrome is not too far off the mark. My sisters and mother see
nothing wrong with dreaming about nips, tucks and breast enhancements.
They love the fact that my youngest sister is a hair stylist and can dye
their hair any color that isn't gray. As I'm someone who has yet to discover
the make-up department; who can't hold a blow dryer and a brush at the
same time; and likes her well-earned gray hair, I find it all quite
curious. It also may be why I enjoyed this book so much. And I am concerned
with the going trend. This week while watching the evening news, I learned
about Botox parties
(think Tupperware or Pampered Chef parties but in this case you invite
your friends over to be coerced into paying for snake venom injections
to cure crow's feet, frown lines and forehead wrinkles). So, as far as
I'm concerned, though this novel is set in the near future, it is spot
on; perceived ugliness syndrome isn't all fiction.

The thing
is, Jonasson's novel is not just a humorous reflection on the beauty industry
and ad agencies, she's asking the not-so-obvious question that if we live
in an age of affordable beauty (to quote William
Gibson's Neuromancer) where does it end? Is there one
perfect prescribed beauty? In case your were wondering, Jonasson does
let our lamentable reporter Beth happen upon the secret project... and
it's a good one, or let's just say, apropos.

As I mentioned,
the novel is set in the near future, thus Jonasson peppers it with everyday
objects that we would expect to see in future homes and our future lives.
In fact, the novel reminded me of a Philip
K. Dick novel in the way future conveniences sometimes hamper and
annoy. The future gizmos aren't that original, i.e. telephones with vid-cameras;
it is the ease with which they are integrated into the story that gives
them credibility. At no time do you feel that she's throwing a piece of
technology in your face so that you'll know its the future, instead, the
props are so integrated into the story you'll wonder why we don't have
the same such convenience already. I was strongly considering putting
this on the Science Fiction bookshelf, but decided that like Laura Esquivel's
novel The Law of
Love, which is also set in the future and includes elements
of traditional Sci-fi, it somehow doesn't seem to completely fulfill the
requirements of that genre.

Another enjoyable
strength of this novel is the depiction of the relationship between Beth
and her daughter Paige. Beth, naturally, is trying anything to be in the
same space with what she hopes could be a communicative, non-hostile Paige.
Beth is realistic, she certainly does not expect to bond, after all, how
does one bond to a kid whose idol is a popular rock star called Lalani
who has had both breasts (and nipples) removed. See here it is again,
an example of what Jonasson does in this novel: she takes a natural mother-daughter
conflict and then rolls in ideas of a possible future and raises the question
about how far can it all go. Only this time the question is in regard
to what's left for the future generation's desire to distinguish themselves
through self-mutilation. And yeah, it's funny.

I can see
where this title or its cover might put a reader off. I was pulled into
the novel reading an excerpt and
I suggest that you do the same. If it's your kind of humor, I strongly
recommend that you give it a try. I don't think that you'll
be disappointed with this fast-paced, yet intelligent novel. Actually,
if you are like me you'll find yourself thinking about it at the oddest
moments, like while watching the evening news.

Bibliography: (with links to Amazon.com)

Book Marks:

About the Author:

Sharleen
Jonasson is the alter ego of a business journalist who writes for publications
in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The list of her publishing credits includes Office.com, Onvia.com, Backbone Magazine, Canadian
Living, and Canadian Business. Her short fiction has been published
in Mississippi Review and Blue Fiction. She lives in Victoria,
B.C., Canada, with her husband and three children.